Want to reinstall into smaller partition

Odysseus said:

Another thing: (this question for anyone) Roy had suggested disabling fast boot to lessen conflicts between dual boot Win10 and linux.

My first question would be is fastboot and fast startup the same? My assumption is that it is, but at my level of (in)competence thought it prudent to ask for confirmation.

My second question is: if Linux is on a separate SSD drive (from Windows which is on the HDD), does the advice to disable fast boot still hold true or do the separate drives make it a non-issue? Thanks

Generally fast boot and fast startup are two different things, but sine Roy mentioned Fast boot in Windows, guess he was talking about Fast startup.
- Fast startup is Windows feature which save some of starting procedure (loading system and drivers) in a file and when booting loads it, without checking if all of them are still needed, since it's the same machine...
- Fast boot is motherboard's manufacturer proceeding for booting BIOS - similar thing but on a BIOS level.

Disable Fast startup in Windows. It's of no real use, if you have SSD. Only makes trouble.

Tenforums tutorials | Turn On or Off Fast Startup in Windows 10

Odysseus said:

Andre, thanks. Learned that an dell xps 8700 i7-4790 motherboard has no M.2 slot, so an adapter is required.

Given my rather unexceptional needs, think I will just stay with SATA SSD at 1/3 the cost.

Samsung EVO is great choice. I'm also using Crucial (MX500) which is also nice. You won't feel any significant difference. Both are real fast, NVMe is faster, but human can't really notice it

Odysseus said:

Andre, Just saw your #32, which I think might have crossed with my 33. Just to make absolutely sure that we are all on the same page with this, the SSD will boot into Ubuntu Mate 18.04, OR Win 10 on the HDD.

You mentioned:
If the SSD is booting into linux, how does having fast startup in Windows on or off make a difference?

Or is it that when I boot into Windows, the presence of the SSD will be problematic?

Not being argumentative. Just want to understand.

Also you mentioned:
Just as I suspected. In any case the few seconds (milliseconds?) is simply not a problem for me. Ubuntu Mate loads plenty fast even off a HDD.

Thanks for all the good guidance.

in my opinion, Fast startup is more problematic on Windows, than it (possibly) could be on Linux. Other user (Ray?) mentioned this (about dual booting).
I don't know about any way that Fast startup could affect other OS. I was talking about regular Windows usage. Since, when you boot other OS, boot manager will restart the system and fast startup is bypassed in that case.

And it has nothing to do with SSD or HDD. It was developed for HDDs, but we are talking about time to load. SSDs are faster, no need for that, but won't hurt them

Clear?

Edit: about SSDs... You would notice a difference, if you're copying a really huge amount of data. NVMs can reach the speed of 4 or 5 times the SATA drives, and in that case, time difference would be significant. Copying ISO (4 GB) takes about 15 to 20 seconds on my SATA SSD. Not a big deal for me.